Priming the Pump, and Food Friday

When I have a chunk of work to do that requires a great deal of concentration and focus and has zero room for errors, it makes me a little bit anxious. That anxiety can lead to paralysis and procrastination. I have found a way to work around that paralysis. I call it priming the pump.

I actually have had experience using a water pump (Thank you Curtis Betts). If you come across a water pump that hasn't been used in a while, the way to get it to work is to pour water down into the pump. The new water is somehow drawn into the workings of the pumps and then you are able to pump as much water as you need.

I was about to start doing the lettering for Linda's tallit. It was difficult to source the fabric and it was expensive. The lettering for this piece just needs to look good. In order to get ready to begin the lettering, I tackled a bunch of jobs that on the face of it looked like nothing but busy work.

I had purchased the Ikea fabric for this tablecloth with my sister. It was during a visit when at least one of our parents was alive. I seem to remember that this shopping adventure may have been during the exhausted aftermath of a health crisis. I love this cloth. Laundering often sets a sharp crease just next to the hem. That hard crease will cause the fibers to break. This cloth had a border of small holes going the entire way around the hem. I ripped off the failed fabric and stitched a new hem.

One of my favorite workhorse table cloths is the one you see behind the challot below.

If you are a regular reader of this blog you have seen it in the background of lots of photos. It is in regular rotation as a kitchen tablecloth. The fabric has been progressively wearing away where the table edges touch the cloth. I suppose I could have just tossed the cloth. I am, however, really fond of it. I wasn't ready to just throw it away.

Instead, I cut away the broken parts of the cloth and cut the rest into napkin sized pieces. All of the napkin sized chunks got hemmed and even mitered.

(Yes,
I am aware that these are not the world's most beautiful miters, but I am sure that you have seen uglier miters.)

Our youngest came by yesterday and he is now the owner of these napkins.

These tasks are perfect for priming the pump. Other excellent tasks that fall into that category include making pillowcases or making myself either a half-slip or a nightgown.

Since my work pump was primed I was ready to tackle the task of painting the text on Linda's tallit.

I have now completed one stripe.

I am now really excited to begin the other three. The little side jobbies did the trick.

Some of you come to this blog to read about sewing and fabric related matters and others are here for the food. For those of you who are here for the food, tonight's dinner is...

Spatchcocked idiot chicken cooked on a bed of carrot and potato batons. The chicken is spatchcocked a word my husband and I keep getting wrong, spotched chicken, sploched chicken. The ventral side of a chicken is cut --so more surface area is touching the cooking surface and the chicken cooks more quickly. It was on sale at my butcher so I bought it.

Idiot chicken is what we call chicken coated with Herbes de Provence. We call it idiot chicken because an idiot can spread this herb mix on chicken and make something that tastes amazing. This was probably the first chicken dish that each of my kids made on their own. The flavor is complicated and delicious especially when you add some citrus juice or wine to the pan. I added the juice of two limes.

My husband watched me put the chicken together and said, "Mmmm, idiot chicken. I love idiot chicken."

I will probably also blanch some broccoli in the next few minutes before Shabbat starts. We have two challot ready to warm up in the oven along with the chicken and i call this dinner cooked.

Shabbat Shalom!

Barukh Dayan HaEmet - Blessed be the True Judge

In 1986, when I first began working for my synagogue, one of the volunteers was a teeny little Austrian woman. Ida was so little and cute, you could swear you could just put her in your pocket and carry her around. Ida also babysat for a little girl in our community. When I saw the two of them running around together and laughing as if they were both four, I knew that when I had kids, Ida would babysit for my kids. In order to be sure that Ida would take care of my oldest, I told her I was pregnant at the same time I told my mother. Soon after my oldest was born, Ida was ready. She was silly, but she was also Austrian. She had her rules. She would care for a child only until they could walk. She felt that she was too old to chase children. She would work only twelve hours a week. The baby had to be fed, dressed and ready to go out when she showed up. Ida's rules made sense. It taught me, and my oldest, the value of having a schedule. Ida and ...

Two funerals and a birthday

I know that it has been a while since I posted. We went to Boston last weekend to celebrate the bar mitzvah of a family friend. I may post about the weekend in a different post. Two disparate topics in one post is all I can manage today. Yesterday was a busy day and filled with big emotions. We began the day at the funeral of a young man who was a Hebrew School classmate of my older son's. I had such fond, fond memories of the sweet, funny, kind and exceptionally bright young man who also had terrible struggles. I kept remembering the young man both as a delightful child full of promise and the suffering that he and his family have been through for the past many years. I sat with two women whose children attended preschool with the young man. We three held one another in our sorrow. Yesterday was also my husband's birthday. My husband is not someone who wants things. When we were at Bingo---the kosher version of Costco I spotted a large package of ste...

It All Feels Like Yesterday

Today, an oponion piece in the Wall Street Journal had the headline These Days, It All Feels Like Yesterday. It seemed a perfect way to sum up how we live our lives these days. I have been far more willing during this Covid time to do the sort of slow going work that I tend to avoid like the plague during normal times. I have been working away on Max's tallit. I had decided to get the lettering on the atara in a new to me way. Actually, to be completely honest, this is a method I have read about since I was a kid. You draw the design on a bit of what is called "waste fabric". Then you embroider the design and then you pull away the waste fabric thread by thread. The embroidered design remains, but all of your guidelines are gone, as if by magic. I had more or less finished embroidering the letters. (There were little bits of letters I hadn't quite finished but knew that I could add after the purple fabric was pulled away.) I began by picking out all of my red basting ...

sarah in nyc

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